Which is Better for Earnings, HubPages vs. InfoBarrel?

Comparing Hubpages and InfoBarrel

I always find it interesting to compare different online writing sites. For instance, I have a hub on a Comparison of Earnings from HubPages and WebAnswers. Normally, this is just a straightline comparison of how much I'm earning on each site in an effort to determine which is probably better for generating income. Here, I take a look at Hubpages and InfoBarrel.com.

And just FYI: the figures being presented here are not my entire online income. You can find more detail on my monthly earnings total at the Passive Pursuit of Income Blog.

November 2011 Earnings Comparison

For those who are unfamiliar with InfoBarrel, it is an article-writing site with 75% revenue-sharing. Needless to say, that's not too shabby. (In fact, I believe the top earner on InfoBarrel makes roughly $2800 per month.)

I started all of my efforts at earning passive income online around the same time - basically, mid- to late-October 2011. That being the case, my earnings for HubPages and InfoBarrel really began in November 2011:

Hubpages: $0.01

InfoBarrel: $1.58

When you consider the fact that I had only built one hub during this time, earning a penny probably shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing. More surprising was the fact that I actually had 16 articles on InfoBarrel by the end of November. In truth, I was more focused on developing my niche sites at the time, so the fact that I actually had this many articles is a bit of a jolt. In retrospect, however, I do recall that initially I was trying to write three articles per day, but I lost that battle rather quickly.

December 2011 Earnings Comparison

Not a whole lot of action took place in December, as evidenced by the earnings below:

Hubpages: $0.19

InfoBarrel: $0.00

I still didn't have anything more than one hub on HubPages, so $0.19 is like striking gold. I added one article on InfoBarrel, but it didn't do me much good. However, my lack of productivity on these fronts was again the result of spending the majority of my time developing niche sites.

January 2012 Earnings Comparison

Finally, I decided to show some love to something other than my niche sites, and the numbers started to change:

Hubpages: $2.66

InfoBarrel: $0.99

I started slowly building more hubs in January. In fact, I joined the 30-hubs-in-30-days challenge towards the end of the month. ( I had 6 hubs when I began the challenge, meaning that I would end the challenge with 36.) With a steady increase in hubs, the income started to increase. As for InfoBarrel, I tacked on 3 more articles in January, giving me a total of 20.

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February 2012 Earnings Comparison

It was draining, but I was able to complete the 30-hubs-in-30-days challenge. Again, the HubPages income showed that my labor was not in vain:

Hubpages: $8.15

InfoBarrel: $0.00

While the numbers aren't setting the world on fire, the continual increase in my HubPages earnings is very encouraging. I only added one new article to InfoBarrel, so I knew the earnings would leave something to be desired (although I had hoped for more than a goose egg). Still, the HubChallenge has shown me that continuing to produce content will be rewarded, so I think I simply need to turn that philosophy towards InfoBarrel.

March 2012 Earnings Comparison

March turned out to be a very good month on HubPages. Just looking at the numbers, we have the following:

Hubpages: $61.42

InfoBarrel: $0.35

I feel blessed to have experienced an incredibe increase in HubPages revenue during March. However, as I've mentioned before, this pace of growth is not sustainable, so I anticipate that it will level off in the near future. InfoBarrel has been my redheaded stepchild of late, and I really need to do more there. (As previously noted, I think InfoBarrel really is a great site, and I need to find more ways to take advantage of it.)

April 2012 Earnings

April was another good month, as evidenced by the following:

Hubpages: $44.49

InfoBarrel: $0.00

For the first time since I started pursuing passive income about 6 months ago, my HubPages earnings have decreased. I'm a little disappointed, but I knew the party couldn't go on indefinitely - especially after the increase I had last month. Still, as always, I'm encouraged by the potential I see on HubPages. I still haven't stepped up the way I should have for InfoBarrel, so the numbers there are more reflective of my lack of effort as opposed to anything else. Simply put, I need to do more with respect to InfoBarrel in order to fully maximized my passive income.

Not Familiar with InfoBarrel?

If you're unacquainted with InfoBarrel, please feel free to visit the site and learn more at InfoBarrel.com.

May 2012 Earnings

My earnings for May are as follows:

Hubpages: $43.78

InfoBarrel: $0.00

I had to go out of town a couple of times in May, but it appears that the effect on my HubPages earnings was fairly negligible. That's clearly a good thing, and bodes well for my ability to earn income passively on HP. I still haven't done as much with InfoBarrel as I should have (or as much as I had originally planned to have done at this juncture). That said, I have a couple of ideas that I will firmly implement in June that will, hopefully, see me get back on the board in terms of InfoBarrel earnings.

Leaderboard

(click column header to sort results)

HubPages

InfoBarrel

November 2011

$0.01

$1.58

December 2011

$0.19

$0.00

January 2012

$2.66

$0.99

February 2012

$8.15

$0.00

March 2012

$61.42

$0.35

April 2012

$44.49

$0.00

May 2012

$43.78

$0.00

Total

$160.70

$2.92

Summary

So far, in comparing earnings, HubPages seems to have taken a nice lead. Moreover, I had significantly more articles on InfoBarrel for at least two months, so the expectation is that there would have been more earnings from InfoBarrel early on.

However, in InfoBarrel's defense, I've seen in numerous places that you probably shouldn't expect consistent earnings from most article-submission sites until you have about 100 articles published. Moreover, I think that with a minimum of 325 words it is easier to publish on InfoBarrel, as I've yet to get a "substandard" or similar classification on my articles there.

In short, as I've mentioned in other articles, I don't think you should put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to online income. In other words, you should diversify and publish on a number of sites rather than just one. Because I still like InfoBarrel's business model and have faith in the site, I will continue - and probably ramp up - my publishing efforts there.

Comments

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sending

Jason B Truth 2 months agofrom United States of America

I'm sure anyone could make a fortune publishing articles on Infobarrel. I'm a member of Infobarrel. However, I have not published anything on that writing site, whereas I have already published fourteen articles on HubPages. Why? Because HubPages is much more user-friendly than Infobarrel is whenever I wish to piece together a quality article and publish it. Hubpages has all the tools to understand how to make an article look exactly the way you want it, whereas Infobarrel is like an enigmatic labyrinth in getting new material published. At the end of the day, it's easier to make a passive income on HubPages than it is on Infobarrel, because it's easier to piece together a quality article on HubPages than it is on Infobarrel. Eventually, I'll publish something on Infobarrel. First, I want to get a Google Adsense account approved so that I can start making money, period. In any event, I liked your article.

K Kiss 4 years agofrom Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Thanks for the numbers. I signed up with inforbarrel, haven'twriten anything yet but your hub is making me reconsider joining infobarrel. Voted up.

Jethro 4 years agofrom Taguig City, Philippines

Thank you for making a comparison. Now, I have an idea that Hubpages is better than Infobarrel. I will never create an account in the latter after seeing and reading this hub. Keep writing more! :)

passionate77 4 years ago

nice information i just came across through your comparison of both sites. thanks for sharing it all. blessings!

Matt 5 years agofrom Lansing, Michigan

I'm only new to the game and have yet to see any earnings worth mentioning, but I can definitely say that I like the user interface and community of writers here at HP much better. I also REALLY like the ability to go back and edit articles after the fact. If an article starts getting stale, I can go in and change the picture or keywords to freshen things up. Ability to choose Amazon products is also a very nice option. We'll see what the future holds.

Interesting analysis. My Infobarrel earnings are much better than my HubPages earnings, and on a per-article basis, I get 5 times more traffic on Infobarrel than on HubPages.

Peggy 5 years agofrom The Midwest - Northern Illinois

Hi Sapien! Just to let you know, I've been using RedGage for my backlinking and it's gotten me some exposure. Oh, and I also joined Ask.com, which is honing my online skills and getting me views. Thanks for the info and all of the advice!

DMyhill,

Maybe you can start keeping a notebook with you. You can jot down an article idea when you're going about your day and something just hits you. Oh, your Sims 3 review is good! I tend to write about things that I'm passionate about and interested in. I figure that I might as well write an article, since I'm researching and learning about a subject anyway. Another advantage for me is that I'm really not a TV person, so I don't have that distraction. LOL..

DMyhill 5 years ago

It takes me around 3-4 hours to write an article at present, sometimes longer if it needs a little tweaking. I too work full-time but fortunately my shifts mean I miss most TV anyway! Though I do watch stuff recorded on my DVR to catchup. I find choosing an article topic is often difficult- which is why I've mainly written problem solving how-to type articles. I appreciate the advice- I just need to focus on a goal and turn off the TV until I have a good base of content online!

Author

Hypersapien 5 years ago

DMyhill,

I think you're right to diversify your efforts and write at different places, but I certainly agree that it is very hard. I did the HubChallenge (30-hubs-in-30-days) and that gave me the impetus to get a lot of content published in a fairly short amount of time, which resulted in an earnings boost. As to time management, that's tricky - especially if you still have atraditional 9-to-5 like me. Frankly, I made the ultimate sacrifice: I gave up TV (to a certain extent). The average American watches 34 hours of television per week - it's like a second job. Once I made the decision to forego television (or rather, to make extensive use of TiVo with the intent to watch at a later juncture), I found the time to regularly crank out content. I try to get my articles done in about 2 hours, but it's not always easy unless I have a very clear idea of what I'm trying to convey. But even then, it will often change midstream and become something else.

The short answer is that I think you should probably give yourself a goal in terms of the number of articles that you want to produce each week, month what have you. Remember, they don't have to be perfect right out of the box. You can always go back and correct them, add to them, etc., later.

Author

Hypersapien 5 years ago

Peachpurple,

You can write about the same subject matter, but you can't post the same content. If you do, your hub will get the "Duplicate" stamp and get unpublished.

DMyhill 5 years ago

Reading about your progress has shown me I need to work my butt off a little more! I've been trying to write at three different sites hubpages, infobarrel and howto-guidebook.com, and to say it's been a struggle would be an understatement! Any tips for time management would be welcome!

peachy 5 years agofrom Home Sweet Home

do you post the same articles at hubpages and infobarrel? Or do you write different articles for both websites?

Author

Hypersapien 5 years ago

purplmama,

I believe that you can write about the same topic but you can't use the same language verbatim, as both sites want unique, original content. Many writers say that they retool their content for different sites in order to make it original. I don't really differentiate between content on the various sites; in other words, I consider both HP and IB fair game with respect to anything I want to write about. That said, it does appear to me that content of a certain nature will often seem to do better on one particular site as opposed to another. With respect to GoArticles, I have some articles published there, but I'd have to check and see what they are. (It's been a while.)

Peggy 5 years agofrom The Midwest - Northern Illinois

Thanks Hypersapien,

My concern is that HP and IB prohibit duplicate submissions, or content. How do you manage to submit content that is different? Do you use each site for a different type of content? Oh, do you also use goArticles?

Author

Hypersapien 5 years ago

purplmama,

I actually have a lens about using HP and Squidoo on the Squidoo website. (Putting the same thing here seemed duplicative.) I don't find Squidoo confusing - it's enough like HP thatI'm not having any issues publishing lenses - but the way their earnings model is set up I haven't started earning anything there. (For instance, I think a lens has to be in existence for two months before you can get earnings on it.) About the only issue I've had with InfoBarrel is the fact that the amount of time for article approval is inconsistent. I've had some approved in hours, while others have taken weeks. I'm not earning much there, but again that could be a result of the amount of content I've published. Right now, between the three, I much prefer HP, but you have to diversify, in my opinion, so I will keep trying to get my earnings up on Squidoo and InfoBarrel.

Peggy 5 years agofrom The Midwest - Northern Illinois

Do you also have a Hub about using Squidoo? I signed up and have my page set up roughly, but it's not published yet.. I'm still a little confused by Squidoo. I'm hearing from other Hubbers that Infobarrel is NOT user or newbie-friendly. It seems that you don't have those issues, correct? Do you find the submission process easy?

Thanks so much for this great Hub!

Author

Hypersapien 5 years ago

Yes, I publish on Squidoo as well. The revenue model is different there - and I really didn't start putting effort into it until January - but I'm hoping to start seeing some income there soon.

breathe2travel 5 years agofrom Gulf Coast, USA

Voted up and useful. Are you familiar with Squidoo?

hazelwood4 5 years agofrom Owensboro, Kentucky

Thank you for sharing this informative article about Hubpages and Infobarrel. I personally love Hubpages! I think it is a wonderful site, with many great tools for writers. Hubpages is a wonderful place to build a passive income. I do look forward to reading more of your articles.